Confessions of a five-ring patriot from Staten Island

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- The crushing right from Australian Damien Hooper that staggered Marcus Browne also buckled my knees like a well-delivered sucker punch.

Like so many other Islanders, I had been eagerly looking forward to watching Clifton native Browne fight his way through the light-heavyweight division and end up on the podium with a medal.

(I don't think I've felt this bad since the Soviet Union was granted three in-bounds plays to defeat the U.S. men's basketball squad for the gold medal in 1972 -- perhaps the most controversial of all Olympic contests.)

And now that my latest Olympic dream has been shattered, the only consolation I can take from it is that there are plenty of events to serve as distractions.

I don't know why, but something bizarre happens to me every four years. For some inexplicable reason, it seems as though I morph into the epitome of the "ugly American" when the Summer Olympics roll around. Although I prefer to think of myself as a five-ring patriot.

While I watched some of the opening ceremonies and "oohed" during the fireworks displays, I was really just biding my time until the competitions began.

Once they did, I ended up spending as much time as I could in front of the TV, taking in all types of sports that I would never even consider watching under any other circumstances -- and I watched lots of them, cheering rabidly as often as I could for the red, white and blue.

On a recent Sunday, I was on tenterhooks before the men's volleyball team defeated Serbia in straight sets, then I turned to the men's water polo match before catching one of the women's beach volleyball teams defeating a squad from Argentina.

Believe it or not, I would have watched skeet shooting and badminton competitions had I been able.

Think about it. I grew up rooting for the Yankees and the Giants, and there am I sweating out a water polo match with Montenegro.

My wife wanted to know how big Montenegro was.

I told her it was about the size of Westerleigh, and I was really annoyed that we couldn't put them away.

I'm also looking forward with great anticipation to the fencing, tae kwando and canoeing events -- not to mention the track and field competitions.

OK, I'm going to watch as many different events as my schedule allows. It's a good thing they don't have the Olympics during the college football season, or I'd be facing one mean dilemma.

For some reason, during every Olympiad, it's as though I'm fighting the Cold War -- when Russia was the arch-enemy and every contest was either a blemish on or a chance to burnish our national pride -- all over again. Having more medals than the USSR was the only thing that seemed to matter back then.

And though the Soviets are now a distant memory, I still want the U.S. to be victorious in every event. It doesn't matter whom we play or that the amateur spirit of the games, so pervasive in my youth, is a thing of the past, I just want to hear our national anthem and watch one of competitors receive a gold medal.

I understand that if one of our boxers gets KO'd by a Latvian fighter that it's not the end of the world. I also realize that we can finish out of the medals in the steeplechase and the sun will rise tomorrow, but that knowledge doesn't make me feel any better.

I've thought about going cold turkey, which I can usually manage with some degree of success during the Winter Games. (OK, I do watch the skiers and the hockey team and maybe a few speed skaters on the tube, but I can miss the biathlon and the curling and still rest easy.)

The only solace I can derive from this inexplicable addiction to sports whose rules I don't even know is the fact that I'm apparently not alone.

Virtually every store you walk into that has a TV -- whether it's a pizza place, restaurant, barbershop or coin laundry -- usually has it turned to one of the seemingly 157 channels broadcasting the games.

So I guess this patriotic fervor is contagious, and for that I'm relieved. After all, as a country we certainly have our flaws, but since this is one of the only things that Democrats and Republicans seem to be able to agree on, I'm all for it.

Now all we need to do is channel that love for America into the other three years and 50 weeks between Olympiads, and we might be looking at a country that's every bit as good as its swimmers, boxers and other upstanding young representatives.